Simon Youel

This is absent. Despite all the talk of the return of industrial policy, we have a bunch of mealy mouthed missions with toothless policy supoort. No clear direction and institutional capacity being massively underutilised. It is a government bathing in the tepid bath of managed decline, to quote KS

As well as the question of what taxes and what spending, there is also the matter of broader strategy. You would expect a robust left economic programme to use all of the levers of state, inc fiscal, industrial and credit policy, plus public financial institutions, to support clear missions

Perhaps it is also that the scope of left-wing economics isn't confined to simply higher taxes and higher spending

Good letter from @youellog.bsky.social responding to this. www.ft.com/content/244c...

What do you mean by this? If the government introduces a contractionary budget why would we not expect unemployment to continue to rise?

I think the problem is the government didn't even need to be good in opposition - indeed some of their problems now stem from choices made prior to governing, e.g certain manifesto pledges

Even that seems to be wishful thinking. What makes people so sure that if they raise income tax at a level aimed at filling the Black Hole that lower growth, lower tax revenue, higher unemployment and higher welfare spending won't result in the Black Hole growing again?

Running a surplus when unemployment is already at 5%? Eh?

I would assume the FT knows this, but ROTE is the preferred measure for banking profitability, for good reason. That is of course less convenient for the author's intent to paint those questioning whether banks can afford to shoulder a higher burden as naive socialists, though.

If this is the case, then publishing this piece is a poor editorial decision to say the least. We should, at a minimum, expect stated financial statistics to be broadly accurate in the Financial Times.

Anyway, I am still none the wiser to what the last sentence of that paragraph is supposed to mean. There are already 70 stations in zone 5 so therefore increasing network capacity and decreasing travel times to Birmingham is a waste of time?

I assumed it was common knowledge that the real benefit of HS2 was increasing capacity across the network, not just making it quicker to get from B'ham to London. I also hoped it was common knowledge since Keynes/Robinson that investment creates savings and thus isn't crowded out by the deficit

Come on Chris, you can do better than this!

False hope about what? That things could possibly get better? Labour telling on themselves here

NEW: UK taxpayers are losing £22 billion every year from losses at the Bank of England - the same as the entire Home Office annual budget. This is the result of a flawed implementation of the BoE's quantitative easing programme. We propose two steps to fix this leak. (1/4)

Poor savings rates and inflation wipe 11p off every £1 There are calls for the Bank of England to act to protect our cash from the damaging effects of high inflation

“High interest rates are a form of economic rent and should be kept as low as possible."

Our @youellog.bsky.social pushes back on the misguided suggestion that the Bank of England should be setting interest rates well above inflation in @thetimes.com via ‪@georgenixon97.bsky.social
bit.ly/3IITWen

I thought this was about life insurance

In 2020, Brazil launched Pix, a public digital payment system during Covid. It is now dominant, undercutting credit & debit card providers, reducing transaction costs, enhancing productivity & increasing financial competition.
Don't tell me the state can't innovate.
www.economist.com/the-americas...

BlackRock to buy Panama Canal ports after pressure from Trump Deal worth $22.8bn involves sale of bulk of ports owned by Hong Kong-based conglomerate CK Hutchison

The return of 'moral suasion'?

www.ft.com/content/b3a1...

Excited to have joined the University of Manchester's Law and Technology Initiative as a Visiting Research Fellow

Looking forward to building the future of public money with @johnhaskell.bsky.social and the talented fellows I am lucky to be working with
www.law-tech.manchester.ac.uk/research/vis...

Sad I am only just finding out about your exquisite music taste now

Either way banks could more reasonably use cash isa funding to increase loans to business, if increasing investment and growth is the goal here. The government seems to be signalling they don't trust banks to intermediate an optimal allocation of capital

Yes basel would make increasing allocation towards equities more expensive for banks for good reason. The government seems to want to pass risks onto consumers

what is stopping banks using cash isa funding to increase their allocation towards stocks if it's such a good idea for ordinary savers?

The government instead wants savers to prop-up a record high stock market. Presumably banks could use cash Isa funding to buy more stocks - is it that they don't want to take those risks themselves, and would prefer savers hold the bag?

Struggle to follow this reasoning from the government - do they think cash Isas literally function like cash under the bed?

What is stopping banks using Isa funding to invest? Is the government saying they don't trust banks to optimally allocate capital?

www.theguardian.com/money/2025/f...

Rachel Reeves' quest to kickstart growth in Britain's economy will see her holding talks with leading investment bankers and asset managers this week, the latest in a series of summits with senior financiers. Sky News has learnt that the chancellor has called in executives from companies including Abrdn, BlackRock, Citi, Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan, Morgan Stanley and Schroders on Wednesday morning. Sources said the meeting was intended to feed ideas into the forthcoming Financial Services Growth and Competitiveness Strategy.

What could possibly go wrong. t.co/se9BwENDAr

Maybe this new 'Office for Value for Money' could look into this arrangement?

Or will the government continue to focus on trying to squeeze piecemeal sums out of victimising people on benefits, while quietly handing much larger amounts to bankers?

www.disabilityrightsuk.org/news/dwp-pla...

Assuming they stick to their fiscal rules (for better or worse), if the government just did something about this they could quite easily rebuild public services without needing to raise people's taxes. Perhaps they could even win the next election?

These transfers to the Bank of England appear to outweigh the savings the government hopes to make from cuts to departmental spending, and could perhaps even cover Labour's previous public investment target of £28bn a year